I’ve finally taken the plunge and started posting my best looks on Lookbook:

Be prepared for a lot of new stuff ahead…

Amazing.

Via TechCrunch.

A guest post by Steven J. Patrick.

The Narrowing of Mars Hill Church: How Humans Screw Up Theology

When Mars Hill Church started, it was a grand idea: eliminate the window-dressing and ceremony of conventional Protestant churches and embrace aspects of pop culture: rock music, sports, films, and current popular issues. Dress down. Bond as a like-minded brotherhood…what’s not to like?

But, as time went on, with young people today being generally either agnostic or indifferent to religion, the task of finding pastors became a process of Whomever Shows Up. Finding anyone, in any arena of human endeavor, who can speak, be confident, command attention, and maintain at least a facade of logic and rationality, as any HR recruiter will quickly tell you, is like looking for your lost cuff links in a gravel quarry. Those who speak without fear or self-consciousness in front of large groups of people tend to fall into four categories: bosses, con men, actors, and psychopaths. And, on the surface, they all look pretty much the same.

Enter guys like Mark Driscoll; people who have few, if any, real ties to the mores of this generation and a fierce, zealot-like belief in “traditional values”, that code phrase for “Let’s turn the clock back to 1956!” What Driscoll says and preaches is no different at all, in essence, from the old-time religion that Mars Hill claimed to reject. Driscoll’s Seattle area messages to the flocks of the local Mars Hill Churches are really no different from what Jerry Falwell advocated, all those years in Lynchburg, VA – minus his $1000 suits and the White Shoulders spume hovering over the chapel. Having attended and/or watched both those churches and seen them in action, I find it crystal clear that Driscoll is attempting – maybe even subconsciously – to elevate himself to the status of the “New Jerry Falwell”; an effort rooted in the fact that The Squeaky Wheel Gets The Grease. Driscoll appears to have a soul-deep understanding, as Falwell did, that the path to personal stardom as a minister/politician is to say whatever outrageous, controversial thing pops into your head, as long as it produces SOME reaction. THAT is how Liberty Baptist Church grew: Falwell ticked people off with his carny antics and his followers rallied around him, forming an “Us vs. Them” bond against the outside world. Every simple, vaguely-disillusioned person within that area of Virginia who felt that the world was not quite “right” gravitated to his message of Assigning Blame for their ills to something, ANYTHING outside themselves. There’s comfort in the idea that the world is to blame and that this crap in our own heads, that gets us odd looks and confrontations when we verbalize it, is actually Right, while the rest of the world is perverse and ignorant of The Truth.

Anyone who imagined that this new generation of Believers would be any smarter or more evolved than the generations of gullible folks who came before them is simply deluding themselves; indulging their egos with a self-serving view of their peer group as more enlightened than the ones that came before. Average, angry people will ALWAYS find a sympatico group who will tell them that Liberals, pop culture, Brittney Spears, American Idol, Avatar, and the media is to blame for their lot. The real truth – that the problems we ALL deal with are almost always of our own making – is exactly what congregations like Mars Hill has become are designed to avoid.

I saw Rob Bell, one of the founders of the Mars Hill “movement” onstage with the Dalai Lama at Hec Edmondson Pavilion during his last Seattle visit. I was taken by his gentleness and direct ideals and started to look into him and Mars Hill. I watched all of his videos on youtube and admired their style and content and simple, elegant truths. This, I thought, is a wonderful idea: religion which recognizes us and doesn’t judge all us rock ‘n’ roll-era kids and try to tell us that the things we love, the lives we lead, have to be gutted, purged, and reassembled to make room for God. No authoritarian old guys in suits, no fancy robes and collars and surplices, no thees and thous – just people of the generations after Elvis, trying to communally reach toward God. I wrote a previous entry in this very blog, dedicated to the idea that this concept can work, despite the wholesale vilification that Mars Hill was already incurring. I got angry emails from people who told me that I didn’t know what Mars Hill was really all about. And, full of myself as I frequently am, I chalked it all up to the Zeal of the Easily Offended.

I was wrong.

As a Christian, I can state without reservation that what comes out of the three Mars Hill Churches I have visited has NOTHING to do with any God I know. ANYONE who preaches confrontation, division, wholesale disdain, chauvinism, or the superiority of their own Truth has automatically disqualified themselves, in my eyes, as a Christian. There is ONE guiding principle with which NO real Christian can argue:

Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You.

Not when it’s convenient, not only when the cameras are rolling, not just when you agree with the other guy. ALWAYS. Mark Driscoll gets, as his followers do, a bit testy when anyone criticizes Mars Hill. But, apparently, as in this latest dust-up over the movie “Avatar” – “the most Satanic movie (Pastor Driscoll) has ever seen” – he feels it’s just fine for him to dump on whomever and whatever he wants. Those who defend him cry that he was only talking to his congregation, that it was a sermon and nothing more. The problem with that reasoning is that Mark Driscoll, for reasons I guess I am not equipped to understand, has Followers – followers who listen to his judgments and then go out among the rest of us and repeat what they heard, use it as a social weapon, and create artificial divisions based on nothing more than the views of one very ambitious, ladder-climbing, normally-imperfect man. I guess, when you’re angling for stardom, as Mark Driscoll certainly appears to be, the rules are supposed to be a little different for you.

Originally published on Seattlepi.com: link

A dear friend of mine, Shyama Rose (prounounced “shawm-ah”), is a nascent-yet-accomplished upcoming fashion designer in Seattle, and (soon) New York City. I’d like to highlight this piece of hers because I cannot fathom how such a striking, quality design could be put-together by hand, and by someone without traditional Fashion School training. Some people just have a knack (and an eye) for good design, and she’s one of them:

This isn’t her first time working with leather, and nowadays, people stop her on the street asking her where she got her unique jacket, and after telling them she made it herself, she gets commissioned to create new bespoke pieces right then and there. It’s really amazing what raw talent, inspiration, and a little perspiration can do for you. It’s worked wonders for her. Shyama Rose, upcoming fashion designer, I commend you.

Not your traditional lab coat – the anti-shazzzam

You can get in touch with Shyama at shyama (at) gmail (dot) com.

I’m proud to announce that I’ll be hosting Seattle’s first Italian Table at Stella Caffè!:

Add to Google Calendar: link
YPIN Event Listing: link
Facebook Event Listing: link

Location:

Stella Caffè
1224 1st Avenue
Seattle, WA 98101
(206) 624-1299

Map:

View Larger Map

Date/Time:

Thursday, March 4th from 6:30-8:30PM

Event Description:

We’ve been starved of speaking Italian for far too long!

Come and join us for an evening of buona conversazione at the very cozy Stella Caffè, downtown Seattle’s only traditional Italian bar/café. Recount stories of your time in Italy with a diverse group of global-minded, inclusive people. If you can converse in Italian and would like to practice and learn, we would love to have you. Bring a friend or two!

Co-sponsors: World Affairs Council – YPIN, Stella Caffè.

This track isn’t my taste, but I’m posting it because:

1) an acquaintance from high school (MTV VMA-award winner Josh Caldwell) of Meydenbauer Entertainment directed and shot the music video,

and

2) the little kids in the video are precious.

The band’s name, Tim & The Space Cadets, is right on–the lead singer seems so emphatically happy when he sings that he looks like a deranged space cadet. I cannot say I’ve seen a weirder lead vocal part (is this Christian rock?). This guy must just be high on life or something; there is no other explanation:

Great video, Josh. I wouldn’t have expected anything less.

You can hire Josh by emailing him at joshblog (at) meyd-ent (dot) com.

Via Hollywood Bound and Down.

Years ago, Errol Knight, the once-celebrated star of Gonzaga’s talented basketball program, got into the habit of calling a good friend of mine (who attended Gonzaga at the time) “nigga”. My friend was and is very white. Errol didn’t know my friend’s name; my friend was instantly recognized by Knight each time, and greeted in the same fashion; “ay nigga,” “ay, what up, nigga!”, and so on.

On one memorable occasion, Errol Knight carried his newborn baby into a wild drinking party that was held off-campus. He quickly spotted and approached my friend, and said “Hey nigga, hold my baby,” as he took a monstrous beerbong pull, and then proceeded to take his baby back from my friend.

I just thought I should share that with you, because it is so horrible, irresponsible, and hilarious that I find it impossible not to share with someone. It’s a story that seems so fantastic that one would prefer to assume it never happened. But it did.

Here’s to Errol Knight, my hero.

Cameron: ummmm where the hell was amanda during the SU Basketball game last night?
Jennifer: shes in vegas with daniela hawking their mother’s designer pantyhose collection at some convention
Cameron: umm right.
…because that makes so much sense.
Jennifer: seriously.
Cameron: umm where was my invite?
wtf
Jennifer: haha
i dunno
i didnt get invited either

Is there anything more romantic than Cougar hunting on Valentine’s Day?:

Cameron: hey beauty
JewelOfPersia: well hello
Cameron: I had a dream about you last night.
JewelOfPersia: hahaha
suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure you did
Cameron: I did!
JewelOfPersia: was i a hot chick in a hijab?
Cameron: no, you were just a flawless persian beauty, like always
JewelOfPersia: awww! so how was the ballet last night?
Cameron: AMAZING NIGHT!!!1!ONE!!
twitter.com/c4mer0n/status/9062014968 – (click to read my Tweet, it is necessary for contextual understanding)
JewelOfPersia: oh goodness. you woke up in a LOBBY?
Cameron: Yes. Classy.
JewelOfPersia: Of course!–this is You we’re talking about here.
dear, i have to get going
need to get ready for my amazing plans tonight
so romantic
dont’ be jels
…
and by romantic, i mean seeing avatar with my sister and her husband.
JewelOfPersia is offline.

Happy Valentines Day, my Jewel of Persia! You know who you are.

A new ranking of the most religious states in America shows only 13 states are less religious than Washington.

Is there any benefit enjoyed by landing on either side of the spectrum, of being more (or less) religious?

As it turns out, there is.

Poor people and poorly-educated people are much more likely to hold religious beliefs and believe in a personal god than those who earn more and have been well-educated. Put another way, religious people are poor and stupid (though to hold this as a universal maxim would be silly…in reality, the statement is but an accurate generalization).

“Several research studies have been published on the statistical relationship between religiosity and educational level, or religiosity and IQ. Michael Shermer, in How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science, describes a large survey of randomly chosen Americans that he and his colleague Frank Sulloway carried out. Among their many interesting results was the discovery that religiosity is indeed negatively correlated with education (more highly educated people are less likely to be religious).” (Dawkins 102)

It’s not only education that is inversely correlated with religiosity; intelligence itself is also negatively correlated (which backs up my rather damning charge that “religious people are … stupid”:

“On the subject of religion and IQ, the only meta-analysis known to me was published by Paul Bell in Mensa Magazine in 2002 (Mensa is the society of individuals with a high IQ …). Bell concluded: ‘Of 43 studies carried out since 1927 on the relationship between religious belief and one’s intelligence and/or educational level, all but four found an inverse connection. That is, the higher one’s intelligence or education level, the less one is likely to be religious or hold ‘beliefs’ of any kind.” (Dawkins 103)

Clear signs that economic development is inversely correlated with religiosity are to be found in the new Pew survey. Specifically, it found that the most religious state in the Union is Mississippi, “with 82 percent of its residents saying that religion is important in their lives.” Mississippi also comes up last in another metric: GDP per capita. Unsurprisingly, Utah, which ranks 2nd nationally in Worship Attendance, comes in at 49th in GDP per capita. More compelling is the story on the other end: irreligiosity and wealth are highly correlated. New Hampshire, Vermont, and Alaska score the lowest levels of religiosity nationally, and all three rank in the top half in GDP Per Capita (with New Hampshire and Alaska both scoring in the top quartile). I’ve gone ahead and placed the state rankings of religiosity (2009) and GDP per capita from 2008 next to one another, and found that, on average, states’ per capita GDP ranking falls only 9 places away from its religiosity ranking, showing a correlation much higher than if we were to assign states random rankings. If we were to give the states random rankings in each, we would find that they would average a distance of 16 places apart. The strong correlation points to the existence of a powerful cause, because the correlation is so much higher than the expected result (if the result expected was ‘random’). The field of statistics doesn’t allow us to name the cause simply by noting a correlation; the identity of the cause as well as the nature of its workings is an answer we can only deduce.

I’ll take a stab at it.

During the primitive stages of humanity (let’s use 1776 as a somewhat arbitrary start-date for the modern era) there were a lack of compelling and widely-available explanations for the often complex and elegant occurrences found in nature. Myriad primitive theories were created in order to explain that which defied explanation. Some of these far-fetched theories included demons, spirits, and gods. These archaic explanations, having no proof whatsoever to support their existence, have been largely discredited and replaced by more elegant theories such as evolution by natural selection and those proposed by the natural sciences, which are concordant with observed nature and rely on evidence instead of primitive, baseless deduction. Modern scientific knowledge has only been around for a few hundred years, and widespread mandatory education has only been instituted in the last hundred. As a consequence of the relatively nascent development of both scientific breakthroughs and widespread education, it’s natural that primitive explanations are still common among the uneducated. As education becomes more ubiquitous, and as superstition loses its lustre, quantitative metrics will show a decline in religiosity commensurate with the increased level of education (which itself is largely dependent on economic development). It stands to reason, then, that once the entire planet’s population is relatively developed (to perhaps 1970’s-American standards of living), supernatural explanations for nature’s existence will have hit the tipping point of minority status, and will see their decline quicken. In a postmodern era (2300 CE onward, perhaps), Religion will be confined to a be a chimera of philosophy, community, and morality, and will have definitively given up its self-styled eminence in explaining the natural world.

How Religious Is Your State? – The Pew Forum On Religion And Public Life

Washington in bottom third of states on religious beliefs – PSBJ

List of U.S. states by GDP per capita – Wikipedia

These PNB danseuses look like porcelain dolls that are about to fall over and break into pieces:

PNB dancers Margaret Mullin, Kaori Nakamura, and Laura Gilbreath rehearsing Jiri Kylian’s Petite Mort. Photo by Bill Mohn.

Director’s Choice runs from November 5th-15th at McCaw Hall.

Chace Bank’s Redmond, WA branch is trying to stiff me for $385 due to the manager’s error. His behavior is pitiful. It looks like I’m not the only one who is fed up and closing my account:

Thanks, Andrew.